Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1583 - A.3 OSPF Packet Formats

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### A.3 OSPF Packet Formats

There are five distinct OSPF packet types. All OSPF packet types begin with a standard 24 byte header. This header is described first. Each packet type is then described in a succeeding section. In these sections each packet's division into fields is displayed, and then the field definitions are enumerated.

All OSPF packet types (other than the OSPF Hello packets) deal with lists of link state advertisements. For example, Link State Update packets implement the flooding of advertisements throughout the OSPF routing domain. Because of this, OSPF protocol packets cannot be parsed unless the format of link state advertisements is also understood. The format of Link state advertisements is described in Section A.4.

The receive processing of OSPF packets is detailed in Section 8.2. The sending of OSPF packets is explained in Section 8.1.

A.3.1 The OSPF packet header
A.3.2 The Hello packet
A.3.3 The Database Description packet
A.3.4 The Link State Request packet
A.3.5 The Link State Update packet
A.3.6 The Link State Acknowledgment packet

Next: A.3.1 The OSPF packet header

Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1583 - A.3 OSPF Packet Formats